Smoking in cars is banned. The state’s next stop is your living room

How the hell do we keep the kids quiet in the car now that we can’t subdue them with tobacco smoke? I suppose we’ll have to resort to slipping a tranquiliser into their in-car snacks, somehow.

Parliament has now voted to make it illegal to smoke in a car when there are children in the back. Or the front, I suppose. I don’t know anyone who does this anyway, frankly. The British Lung Foundation, a pressure group which campaigns for equal rights for all lungs, regardless of colour, creed or gender, has stated that 430,000 children aged between 11-15 are subjected to cigarette smoke in cars every week. Where did they get that figure from? I have not seen the slightest evidence to suggest that it is true. Some paediatrician on the radio said that smoking in cars increased the risk of viral meningitis. No it doesn’t. That is an absurd statement. I used to feel sympathy for paediatricians when enraged members of our untermensch beat them up or set them on fire, believing that they fiddled with kiddies. Now I’m not so sure.

This is the intrusion of the state into the home. And it will be your houses next. And once they’ve stopped you smoking at home, they’ll start on your diet and your drinking. There are no limits.

But that doesn’t matter, as long as it ‘feels good’ then that’s all that matters – it doesn’t matter if bringing in this law achieves sweet FA, it ‘feels good’ so that’s overrules everything else….. eh liberals…

Drainsville

I suppose we could ban children, but then the government would have a
policy effort to import new subjective, to wear their rhetorical
rehashes from selected forebears that showed some form of congeniality
with the population that didn’t perform the mass exodus to Antipodean
lands. It just seems a shame that these new incumbents of our heritage
don’t understand a word of what they are saying. If they did, our immigration problems would no longer exist.

http://ajbrenchley.com/ Swanky

I think I get your gist but I’m not entirely sure. Was Cabernet Sauvignon, Rioja, or a Pinot Noir from either continent somehow involved in the making of this comment?

Drainsville

I haven’t read all what has been suggested, but I believe they haven’t stopped the children from smoking in the car, so I guess you could always reach back and take a lug off theirs. Conversely, if that doesn’t seem appropriate (they can’t afford the things due to a lack of pocket money for obvious reasons) you could always hang them out of the window until you are done. We might see a return of the roof rack, but perhaps that is too much to postulate.

Emilia

I live near a busy junction and am amazed at the number of people who turn right, through a red light, while using their phones. If the police can’t stop these people, how are they going to notice a) the cigarette and b) the child as a car goes past? I know which I consider to be more the dangerous practice.

http://ajbrenchley.com/ Swanky

Americans drive on the phone all the time. I’m still here! So is my husband. So is the mother-in-law and the window salesman….

Sheumais

The Scottish government snorts with derision at merely invading the personal space of someone’s car, it is proposing to appoint a nominee to monitor the life of every child up to the age of 18. “Most parents won’t notice” offered this ludicrous proposal’s advocate on tv, adding it will not be required for parents to engage with this nominee. Isn’t that wonderful, you must bring up your child in a government-approved way and they will check every move you make, whether real or imagined by the child.

Would you trust a politician with your children’s welfare?

oddsteven

Nothing to it really. When you want a smoke, stop the car, make the children stand outside while you puff away, and when you’re done have them get back in. This saves them from the dangers of secondhand smoke, which by the way is apparently more dangerous than firsthand smoke, judging by the amount of hysteria people go into about it.

mrsjosephinehydehartley

I was told smoke in a greenhouse actually kills little bugs. And tobacco was once used to kill worms in horses, I understand. I suppose if somebody was rich enough they might want to test how meningitis virus reacts to tobacco smoke in the air ( assuming any risk of meningitis relates directly to it’s presence in the air..) But it’s he who pays the piper that calls the tune in research, I understand.

Even so , it is very creepy to think we might have professionals working through the powers of corporate personalities to effectively execute our statutory rights – telling us what we can do and what we can believe even in our private space eg one’s car.

Eyesee

Oh Mr Liddle I do so like reading your output. It is a joy both in content and style, not least as the surly bonds of Leftism seem to loosen around your frame. Maybe you are just losing weight. But however achieved, slowly the things you supported come to mean different things to you. Big State is a mentality that requires a small and voiceless populace. And now it is hitting smoking it gets personal. A Conservative is a Liberal who has just been mugged or some such. Yes, the joyless world of Marxism that we are being dragged towards seeks to control everything and don’t be misled about how low they will go. Yes speed cameras bring in revenue, but really why they exist is because drivers have, for too long been allowed to decide to a large degree what speed was appropriate. Now blame is attached whenever a driver steps outside the arbitrary parameters. (For now you can still decide where and when, but…). I hate smoking. I resent being covered in the stink against my will, but I worry about the way control was brought about. It was the state, making a rule just to control, rather than requiring that a smoker does not cause unpleasantness to others. Though I’m not sure how we resolve the conundrum.

GraveDave

What about smoking mothers to be, who haven’t yet had chance to drop their belly passengers.

Pier66

Ban smoking everywhere!

http://ajbrenchley.com/ Swanky

So now we’re not allowed to telephone in the car, smoke in the car, fornicate in the car (I suppose), and for all I know, watercolours in the car and photography from a moving vehicle are illicit as well. Soon there’ll be nothing left but the prohibition of driving in a car. We’ll all be obliged to take the bus.

Emilia

When was it ever legal to fornicate in a car while driving it? Do tell!

http://ajbrenchley.com/ Swanky

There might be fornication in the backseat while someone else is driving. One of the less enjoyable scenes from Saturday Night Fever comes to mind. Cars are singularly ill-suited to that activity for all sorts of reasons, but that doesn’t seem to prevent it!

I don’t support the English ban on telephoning while driving: I think that should be left to driver discretion, as it still is here in America. Texting is a different matter. I don’t think that holding a phone while driving is really good practice, but there are times when pulling over and shutting off the car to talk is simply not an option, and much trouble can be saved by allowing a driver to communicate with the world outside his car while he is travelling in it. That’s the modern world we live in. The fact that they couldn’t do it in 1970 anyway is not really the point, to my mind. It is perfectly possible to have a practical conversation while driving and also monitor the road as drivers must. If two hands are needed for the wheel, then it’s time to end the call. Unless Britain also bans holding a drink in one hand while driving, it’s penalizing phone users unreasonably.

But then, in America most drivers drive automatics, which make anything you do in a car that much safer. Arguably, Britain’s reliance on an older technology — standard shift requiring two hands much more often — holds it back in the use of new technology, i.e. mobiles. But was a ban truly necessary?

Kitty MLB

Yes, both you ladies are correct,
such acts in a car, especially a classic
car partaking in the Monte Carlo Rally
would be somewhat dangerous and I
Should think uncomfortable.
Phones in cars,well modern cars
have hands free, especially with Sat Navs.
You make an excellent point,
people do eat whilst driving, especially
on the way to work.

La Fold

To quote the late Bill Hicks, ” If you want to complain about my smoking, take a long look at the world we live in… and shut the f##k up.”

GraveDave

Is it allright Rod, to smoke in the bath, do you think?

Emilia

Not if there are children in it too.

mandelson

We should all be under constant surveillance and control because if you are compliant you have nothing to hide. The scary thing is that the mass of sheeple will agree with this.

GraveDave

It’ll be the wankers next. They’ll be telling us it makes you go blind or summing. But it don’t. I promise

Fencesitter

This woman – Rachel Cooke – means you harm, Rod…

There was one column by Rod Liddle – it began with the words: “Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean after a few beers, obviously, not while you were sober” – that I found so disgusting I flushed violently all the way from my breastbone to my forehead when I first read it. I looked like I had German measles. Even now I would still like to do something really unpleasant to the man who wrote it.

This is the only kind of legislation that will pass through Parliament/the Lords unopposed nowadays. What poppyc*ck – who still has confidence in these socialist ineptocrats? Why are we allowing these socialist losers to cling on to power for dear life? Their fate is sealed – it will be delivered in May, then in September, then again in May.

Darnell Jackson

That’s it.
I intend to strap a doll into a car seat and drive around smoking.
Lots of fun to be had here.

nemesis

Go the whole hog and stick a ciggie in the dolls mouth. Apoplexy all round.

My point isn’t whether a smoking-in-cars ban is good or bad. Actually I hate banning things.

My point is how we got here. We have to accept that the public mood is very authoritarian and that most people support this ban.

It is manufactured consent, however. There has been no popular demand for this ban, nu upswing of public concern about the issue.

It has been entirely driven by government organisations like Tobacco Free Futures which have spent millions propagandising the public into supporting a ban.

That seems to be how the state works these days. They create a scare, promote it through the compliant media which seems to have lost all sense of journalistic inquiry and then come up with a ‘solution’.

It is very unhealthy for democracy and undermines the proper relationship between the politicians and the public.

In fact, these tax-funded ‘fake charity’ millions are in direct competition to libertarian bodies like UKIP whose cause is ridiculed by what are, in effect, civil servants.

Colin56

It’s all about taking personal responsibility. Socialist education policy over the past few decades has produced a nation of people so idle and stupid they don’t know right from wrong; and how they should behave – whether in a car, the pub, the street or their own homes, and especially without consideration for other people, including their own children. Thus the State, gawd help us, has to step in to protect children who should be protected by the parents themselves. If people could be trusted to think for themselves and behave properly we wouldn’t need Nanny to do it for us, would we? We are becoming infantilised by socialist policies, because that’s just how the Statists want us – a docile and deferential population. And Cameron is a willing pawn in this strategy.

La Fold

Right from wrong? some of the young people I have worked with wouldnt know right from left. Any idea of the outside world is a mystery, with history and geography a complete blackhole for most of them.The idea of personal choice or independence has long gone along with any sort of impetus or motivation too.

Colin56

I’m not sure I agree completely with your last sentence – their personal choices seem to trump any sort of consideration for everyone else, so they have a pretty developed idea of their ‘rights’ irrespective of what the ‘rights’ of others might be. It’s that ego-centric sense that leads to lack of understanding of how to behave in society (whatever that is these days).

La Fold

Fair point. I shouldve said personal responsibility for their own choices.

Flintshire Ian

Good business for car window tint shops coming up!

James Strong

You might say that this law is unenforceable.
I predict that sooner or later a member of the public will take a photo of someone smoking in a car and send that ‘evidence’ to the authorities and ask for a prosecution.
Can you imagine the joy with which this would have been greeted by the Stasi, or others states’ agents of conformity and oppression.

James Strong

It’s only partly about smoking.
Mostly it’s about control, the idea that the state can tell you what you can and can’t do.
It won’t stop with smoking.
The idea of minimum alcohol pricing has been around for a couple of years, it won’t be allowed to go away.
You’ll have noticed that the meme about the dangers of sugar has become more prominent in the last couple of months.
The idea of ‘offensive’ tweets has now been established. In small steps we might get to the stage where pro-smoking tweets are ‘offensive’.
Then any tweets that dissent from what the authorities disapprove of?
This will not happen tomorrow, of course, but we are heading for more and more authoritarianism and less and less freedom.
We need to fight this.

Colonel Mustard

And all these incremental assaults on freedom are promoted by unelected agenda-driven bodies subsidised by taxpayers. This is not the will of the people but the will of state-subsidised busybodies whose lucrative salaries motivate them to invent ever more issues to ‘campaign’ against. How many subsidised anti-smoking charities does one country need?

The irony is that this has happened under a government that promised to “sweep away” this nonsense.

dewisa

unelected ? are you on about the right country? this is about the UK. are people not more concerned over safety in the sense of a cigarette end can reach over 700 f using your phone is dangerous but thats just stupid, the amount of drivers ive seen too distracted by their cigarettes and almost going into the side of me is insane.

StephanieJCW

I think anybody who smokes in a car with children in it is a complete and utter tosspot.

But, really this is not for the state to intervene! And it is quite simple, one stop from here to banning smoking in homes for the same reason.

rtj1211

Mr Liddle

You go on about ‘intrusiveness of the State’, but the reality is that the cost to society of tobacco is mostly borne by the State also.

It’s one thing investment bankers puffing away because if push comes to shove you can tax them or make them pay for their smoking-related healthcare out of their own pockets.

When it’s the working class, they can’t afford to, so smoking is a drain on NHS resources.

Taxing nicotine seems to just make people go without other things, so making things illegal is the next effort.

To say that right wingers’ global views on taxation and the role of the state is filled with cognitive dissonance would be generous in the extreme.

I”m in favour of a small state, but the corollary of that is that irresponsible swathes of population don’t bankrupt it.

StephanieJCW

” but the reality is that the cost to society of tobacco is mostly borne by the State also.”

No it’s not. Smokers pay far more in tax than they take from the state. Even ASH concedes that point.

La Fold

This is why insurance based medical policies factor in such things as smoking, drinking, exercise and othe lifestyle attributes into the premium price.
Look at America where one of the groups with the best quality of health is the Mormons. That isnt because Mormons have access to better health care but because they generally have healthier lifestyles.
This is why many of us in favour of a small state are also in favour of reducing the size of the NHS and replacing it with private medical insurance/ pluralism in helath care choice.

James Strong

Absolutely right.
Anyone who believes that the NHS is ‘the envy of the world’ is deluded.
Unfortunately, as my old ‘mate’ Hookes Law pointed out, I advocate a lot of policies that would be election losers.
Stand in an election on the promise of slashing the NHS and diverting medical resources to private medicine and you’ll get slaughtered. At the moment and in the near future.
But we must get the idea discussed: the NHS is not the best way to provide medical care in the UK in the 21st century.

James Strong

But having the NHS is wonderful for authoritarians who have extra opporunities to ban things because of the ‘cost to the NHS’.

La Fold

Such an envy of the world that only North Korea and Cuba have similar systems.

Fergus Pickering

You just made that up. And I’ll bet Cubans are healthier than Mexicans..

La Fold

Well with a well reasoned argument backed up with razor sharp thinking like that…
Come on Fergie, tell me where else has a National Health Care system like us?
Fergus pickering = a pair of clown shoes.

http://ajbrenchley.com/ Swanky

I bet they aren’t. Do you know the stress of living in enforced, policy-made poverty? Of living under tyranny? Of knowing that you can never speak your mind without risk of losing what little freedom you still have? Why do so many people view Cuba through bizarrely rose-tinted glasses? There is a ‘show’ Cuba for the tourists — who are lied to — and then there is the reality. Don’t be fooled.

gerontius

“To say that right wingers’ global views on taxation and the role of the
state is filled with cognitive dissonance would be generous in the
extreme.”
Sorry but you’ll have to explain where the cognitive dissonance comes in, because I don’t see it.

Fergus Pickering

I don’t even know what a cognitive dissonance is. Would you like to explain it?

gerontius

I don’t know either to be honest. rtj1211 diagnosed it though, so I’m taking it seriously.

arnoldo87

A good example is Rod Liddle and smoking.

Being a smoker he chooses to jump on any piece of evidence that smoking is not harmful and trumpet it, but ignores the (much more substantial) data that tells us that it does immense damage to human health.

In this way he can justify his revolting habit to himself.

Classic Cognitive Dissonance.

Nearly everyone on this site exhibits it (including me)

Fergus Pickering

Got it! It’s irrelevant to the subject under discussion.

Fergus Pickering

Got it! It’s irrelevant to the subject under discussion.

Baron

Smokers contribute around £10bn pa to the Exchequer, rtj1211, if the money were ring-fenced for curing those who indulge in the weed they would probably live longer than non-smokers.

This is what irks most. The EU subsidises tobacco growers, the Government taxes tobacco massively, at the same time, both the Brussels commissariat and the Government use emotional blackmail to enact laws that criminalise smokers. Secondary smoking causes infinitesimally negligible harm, research shows.

Fergus Pickering

Ever heard of tax? Smokers pay huge amounts of tax.

James Allen

Revolution required. Straw that broke the camel’s back. &c.

Lungfish

I don’t care anymore- just read that stupid book,1984,- its slow but sure, the death of personal responsibility, what can we do?- .Somebody is always at fault, even if it rains, it has to be somebody’s fault.

James Allen

You can argue your case for change with people you know; vote UKIP; refuse to pay the TV license; seek to minimise your UK tax liability as much as possible; find every (legal) loophole to evade state control….. there’s plenty to do…. but you must do at least some of it.

La Fold

Been actively refusing to pay my tv license for well over a year now and Im damn proud of it. No way am I subsidising the Paedogeddon bandwagon

Robert Taggart

Never learnt to read – prefer the stage play !

Fergus Pickering

In what way is 1984 stupid?

skara_brae

First they came for the pub smokers and I did nothing.
Because they used to make my hair and clothes stink worse than an ashtray in a
teacher’s lounge and turned my once pristine lungs into black, dripping tar-bags.

Then they came for the car smokers and I did nothing because
other than being mildly revolted at the butts flung out of the windows I cared
nothing for the progeny of puffers and considered it none of my effing.

Then they came for the home smokers and I got all “Englishman’s castle” about the
issue and stood shoulder to sloped shoulder with Rod behind a hastily
constructed barricade snarling and sipping JD.

Fergus Pickering

I never noticed that my clothes stnk of anything except beer.

sharon332

Also why criminalise someone smoking in a car with children but not a parent feeding their child junk food and damaging their health?

Noa

That’s next…

sharon332

Smoking is a terrible and disgusting habit and I do not condone it at all. However this doesn’t stop me from being concerned by this new law. I believe that it is bad law.
This law will criminalise huge swathes of the working class who will most likely be the ones to get caught in the act. Education would have been better than criminalising the very people labour purport to represent.
What about smoking whilst pregnant?
Also surely banning smoking in homes will have to be the next logical step.
Perhaps cigarettes should just be banned altogether.
This is a law which hasn’t been given sufficient thought, and common sense has not prevailed. Why should someone found smoking in a car with children be criminalised whilst a pregnant woman smoking is not? Also what about a chain smoking parent in small council estate puffing away on 20+ cigarettes during one evening. There are serious holes in this law.
Labour are causing yet more grief for the very people they claim to represent.

Lungfish

Smoking is absolutely fantastic

rtj1211

To you perhaps.

Please don’t impose your own views on everyone, like a socialist state gone mad.

Fergus Pickering

No. You don’t have to smoke. Really you don’t.

Daniel Maris

A silly article.

For one thing you’re already not allowed to do various things in your home, including beating your children.

Bosanova

Mr Liddle makes a valid point – where will it all end? When does nanny stop and the individual start to take responsibility?
Secondly, a law which cannot be effectively policed or enforced is, de facto, a stupid law.
I’m not a smoker, but I am fed up of smokers being the target (dare I say “the butt”?) of nonsense laws which won’t alter the course of human history, nor measurably improve anyone’s quality of life. These “non-laws”, a distraction from proper law making, serve just to make a few headlines to show the plebs that the politicians really “care” and are doing something about a problem most of us had barely considered warranted legislation until this latest debacle.
Where will it end, I asked above? Just look at other nanny (read socialist, the-state-knows-best) states around the world. A trip to Brazil would reveal (a tiny selection of many daft laws) that it is illegal to drive a vehicle with your arm hanging outside the window (very widely ignored). Also, posted prominently next to every single lift a notice stating you must, by law, check the lift is on your floor before you enter – seriously!!! this IS a law, not just a (good?) suggestion. But who’s there to check compliance? Are there prosecutions? How many lives are saved? That is where unchecked nannyism leads to. These laws consume Government time and money and for what benefit?

Daniel Maris

But it actually cuts both ways doesn’t it? You don’t want nanny to stop the individual over-indulging in cream cakes…but when the obese individual can no longer function and needs 10 people to hoist them into a specially designed ambulance to take their 50 stone body to hospital for incredibly expensive treatment, well that’s pretty nannying isn’t it?

I actually opposed and still do oppose the complete ban on smoking
in pubs. I think there should be specially licensed pubs where smoking can continue either throughout or in special bars. They may require some special arrangements to protect bar workers from the effects of secondary smoke, but subject to that I don’t see what the problem would be with them.

James Allen

Just think of all the poor, innocent, desperately-screaming mothers whose children are picked up and taken away by social services because they’ve picked up an “unexplained” injury.

You can smack your children – where did you get that it’s not allowed.

And the point is, things you cannot do ‘in the home’ you cannot do full stop. There is no ban on smoking, so as it is perfectly legal, the government shouldn’t be telling you you cannot do a perfectly legal act in your personal, private space.

Daniel Maris

I used the word “beat” advisedly. You are not allowed to beat your child, i.e subject them to anything that could be considered a violent assault. Smacking is actually borderline I think you’ll find.

Colonel Mustard

I believe that it is against the law to murder someone in your home. They key word is murder, the crime, the guilty act -actus reus – and the guilty intent – mens rea.

Here we have the equivalent of making murder an offence only in certain circumstances, in your car where the victims are children for example.

Smoking is not a crime per se. But this act criminalises an imagined consequence of the act in specific circumstances, without the guilty intent (people are unlikely to smoke in cars with children to intentionally harm them). It is like charging someone who drops litter with assault on the grounds that the litter might harm someone.

It is barmy. It sets a barmy precedent. And you are barmy to defend it.

Daniel Maris

It’s illegal to subject a child (or indeed a non-consenting adult) to noxious gases. To my mind the law is just clarifying that point with regarding to release of noxious gases from cigarettes. Because cigarettes are a long established and legal form of drug-taking it is understandable that some people may not realise what they are subjecting their children to.

tastemylogos

are you stupid, too? i can’t even be bothered pointing out the obvious flaw in your false analogy. anybody with a braincell will spot it. dear oh dear. god.

gerontius

Beating your children is illegal.
Smoking is not illegal.

arnoldo87

It is illegal to smoke in an enclosed public space. If the health reasons for that are logical then smoking in a private (severely enclosed) space with a child in it should also be illegal, for the child’s sake.

gerontius

Neither a car nor a home are public spaces.
I don’t smoke so I don’t have much of a dog in this fight.
I was just commenting on a line of reasoning that started with the assumption that making it illegal to smoke in your home was no different to making it illegal to murder the wife in your home.
I’m coming round to the view that having children in modern England should be illegal, for the child’s sake.

Daniel Maris

If a car, as you claim, is not a public space, then you should be able to sit in your car naked. I think you’ll find that’s not actually legal.

Daniel Maris

Wrong analogy. Beating is not illegal. You can beat a consenting adult.

gerontius

Read my post again Daniel:

“Beating your children is illegal.
Smoking is not illegal”.

Daniel Maris

Yes I read it and found the analogy faulty. Providing children with cigarettes IS illegal.

gerontius

My statement:
“Smoking is not illegal”.

Your statement:
“Providing children with cigarettes IS illegal.”

different words mean different things.

Baron

No, Daniel, you wrong, one cannot beat one’s children anywhere, as is the case for the brainless to$$er Mynydd, who cannot kill his wife whether at home or elsewhere.

Nicholas chuzzlewit

Fatuous. I suggest you read Colonel Mustard’s response.

contravariant

Anyone want to invest in the development of tiny smoke sensors, combined with miniature microphones sensitive to children’s voices. An alarm could transmit the GPS coordinates to the plod (or certified listeners with their own app).
This would also have the potential to be fitted (compulsory) in people’s homes, save countless lives and make a mint for the investor.

Mynydd

There is already an intrusion of the state into the home, As much as I want, I cannot kill my wife over the TV remote.

Sam Martini

Worth a try, surely?

StephanieJCW

You cannot kill your wife full stop. There is no ban on smoking.

(This did make me titter by the way!)

Pootles

‘Titter’ ? Surely that deeply offensive, sexist, transgenderist term has been banned, Matron?

Fergus Pickering

A titter ran round the court.

Colonel Mustard

Trust you to present a fatuous argument on behalf of the national socialists. See my comment above.

tastemylogos

are you stupid? i can’t even be bothered pointing out the obvious flaw in your false analogy. anybody with a braincell will spot it. dear oh dear. god.

Don’t have time to read the paper, but the word ‘model’ appears quite often. This suggests (Sheffield style) that you know what to expect and adjust the parameters until you get the answer you first thought of.

Daniel Maris

Where exactly? I had a quick look and couldn’t see anything. Even if it says 20% of young people claim to have been with their parent when they were smoking in their car, it doesn’t equate. A 15 year old child will have a reasonable memory of such events stretching back 10 years. You need to focus on the recent past since there has clearly already been a sea change in attitudes to smoking in the car with children. I think it is generally frowned upon now, even by smokers. 430K is I suspect one of those bogus figures that pressure groups like to bandy about.